Football Programmes of Yesteryear No. 6: Horsham v Swansea City, Friday 30th November 2007

Roberto Martinez, a highly rated young manager who had taken over at Swansea City the previous February, walked into Horsham’s Queen Street on the evening of November 30th 2007 with the praise of the football media ringing in his ears. City had just started their third season in their new Liberty Stadium, and having narrowly missed out on the playoffs the previous May despite only one defeat in eleven matches had started the new campaign superbly, with Martinez arriving in Horsham as the current holder of the League One Manager of the Month Award. His side were at the top of the table and favourites for promotion.

Horsham were the second Isthmian League club the Swans had faced in the cup this season. They’d already had a trip to Billericay Town and defeated the Blues by two goals to one.

The Hornets had a far more experienced manager. John Maggs had already steered them to two promotions since taking over in November 1999, and prior to that had spent most of his life at Crawley Town, taking on a number of roles including those of manager and chairman. He described the match as “the biggest in the club’s history”- and these were words echoed by his chairman, Frank King, Mr Horsham himself, who added:

“In all its 126 years in existence not one of us would have imagined that the whole of a match that our team is involved in would be shown on television worldwide, and to be in the Second Round Proper of this great national competition is a really tremendous achievement. Swindon Town in 1966 was a great moment, and so indeed was the Notts County match in 1947, but tonight’s match against Swansea City is an even bigger occasion.”

Frank went on to thank a number of people, but reserved special praise for John Lines- at that point club secretary, and these days Vice Chair and CEO- “who has had a nightmare week in satisfying the needs of Sky TV, the police, fire service and safety officers.” Major works had to be carried out to allow the club to play the match at their Atspeed Stadium, and John had been the driving force behind ensuring that everything was done.

The participants

Horsham were in their second season as an Isthmian Premier Division side, after promotion in 2005-06. They’d won eight and lost five of their thirteen matches so far, the only side in the division without a single draw to their name; and with as many as five matches in hand over some of the clubs around them, a consequence of their FA Cup run. To get to this stage the Hornets had defeated Arundel by seven goals to one, Bury Town three-two, fellow Isthmian Premier side AFC Wimbledon on penalties after nil-nil and one-one draws, Chippenham Town by three goals to two, and then, in the first round, Maidenhead United by four goals to one in front of three thousand, three hundred and seventy nine fans.

The Horsham squad included a number of familiar names, but we’ll focus on one. The most experienced player, with three hundred and ninety four appearances and one hundred and twenty five goals, was a certain Gary Charman. The programme describes him thus:
‘A skilful, two-footed winger who has progressed from the Youth Team nine years ago and has been a fixture in the first team ever since. Horsham boy Gary has spent all of his career at Queen Street apart from a brief spell at Walton & Hersham in 2005-06.”

The Horsham team for the match was as follows:

Paul Seuke, Stuart Myall, Tom Graves, Nigel Brake, Kevin Hemsley, Lee Carney, Jacob Mingle, Lewis Taylor, Simon Austin (Lee Farrell 66), Carl Rook, Gary Charman. Subs Not Used: Rob Frankland, Eddie French, Andy Howard, Yinka Salaam.

Swansea City, as already mentioned, were top of League One. The club were on their way back to the big time- and indeed this was their last season in League One, and they’ve been no lower than the Championship at any time since. The pinnacle of their previous achievements had seen them finish the 1981-82 season in sixth place in Division One (that’s what the Premier League used to be called, in case we have any readers who don’t remember life before Sky TV), when, under John Toshack, they’d had a side which included the likes of Bob Latchford, Alan Curtis, Dean Saunders, Leighton James, Dai Davies and Ray Kennedy. It was a season which had seen them on top of the league with twelve matches to go, and that sixth place is the best they’ve ever achieved- although they did finish eighth under Garry Monk in 2015.

Garry was, as you will see, in the side that played at Queen Street- along with Alan Tate, who is still at the club as Assistant First Team Manager and Academy Coach; Angel Rangel who played for the club for more than ten years as they climbed to the Premier League; Joe Allen- who went on to play for Liverpool and Stoke City and has made fifty six appearances for Wales; Jason Scotland, who went on to play for Wigan Athletic and Ipswich Town and appeared forty one times for Trinidad and Tobago; and Warren Feeney, who got forty six caps for Northern Ireland and was comparatively recently Assistant Manager up the road at Crawley Town. These days he’s managing in Bulgaria.

The City team for the match was as follows:

Dorus De Vries, Kevin Austin, Kristian O'Leary, Alan Tate, Andrea Orlandi (Andy Robinson 78), Garry Monk, Angel Rangel, Guillem Bauza, Thomas Butler (Leon Britton 82), Joe Allen, Warren Feeney (Darryl Duffy 76). Subs Not Used: Jason Scotland, Dennis Lawrence.

The match:

Guillem Bauza's forty first minute goal gave City the lead, but they couldn’t find a second, kept at bay particularly by Hornets keeper Paul Seuke, who was only playing because Alan Mansfield was suspended. In torrential rain which left the City goalmouth in the second half looking like a river, Alan Tate gave away a needless penalty with a foul on substitute Lee Farrell, and with five minutes remaining Lewis Taylor slammed home the penalty to send the Horsham fans into rapture. They held out to make the trip to the Liberty Stadium for a replay on Monday 10th December.

You can watch the brief highlights of the match as shown on Match of the Day- here- but we’d suggest that you also watch these supporter highlights. Taken from behind the Swansea goal with a mobile phone, they might be of dubious quality but they give a real flavour of the atmosphere.

The programme

Horsham still deliver excellent programmes, but this one is quite superb- indeed it rather resembles a history of Horsham in one volume. Eighty two full colour pages, it’s an Adam Hammond (the editor) masterpiece, giving a brief history of the club, a round up of the previous six seasons under Maggs, a list of top scorers going back season by season until 1951, a review of the preview weekend’s fixtures across the Isthmian Premier and all of the current stats, a year-by-year history of Swansea City, a five page history of Tommy Lawton, and the clubs entire FA Cup, FA Amateur Cup, FA Trophy, FA Vase Corinthian League, Athenian League and Isthmian League records. People who started reading it in 2007 probably haven’t finished yet!

And, of course, we haven’t mentioned the usual squad features for both sides, manager and chairman’s views, stats for the season so far and a large number of colour action photographs. If all programmes looked like this we’d all need to reinforce our lofts to ensure that our programme collections didn’t end up in the living room by accident.

The programme for the replay at the Liberty Stadium was the same price- £2- but nowhere near as good and less than half the size.

The season- and beyond

Horsham ended the season in eleventh place, but they had bigger problems than their league position to worry about. In 2008 the club decided to take the cash offered by developers and sell their prime-location town centre stadium, buoyed by promises from the local council that they would support them to build a new ground elsewhere. Initially, at least, it seemed that the council lied- planning application after planning application was turned down, and the Hornets ended up as tenants at Worthing, Horsham YMCA and Lancing FC until, finally, they got the go-ahead to build their new Camping World Community Stadium, which opened last summer. Whilst living a nomadic existence they fell as far as Step Five before, under the guidance of manager Dom Di Paola, they bounced back, earning two promotions to start this season in the Premier Division once more.

Gary Charman is now back at the club, and made his six hundredth Hornets appearance in January. Of course, he was also a part of the Bognor Regis Town side which won promotion a few years ago, and has also played for Eastbourne Borough and Burgess Hill Town.

City won the replay at the Liberty Stadium by six goals to two; although that was a match in which the Hornets were twice ahead. They were, however, victims of a giant killing in the next round, losing a replay against then National League South side Havant and Waterlooville by four goals to one.

Martinez left the Swans in June 2009 to join Wigan Athletic, where he won the FA Cup. He later managed Everton, and became Belgium manager on the summer of 2016, taking them to third place in the 2018 World Cup and to the rank of World Number One last summer.